Part-time work to care for children: more women than men
Reconciling work and caring for children is not easy, and this is why there are many cases where people choose to ask for part-time work and, in this way, be able to devote more time to caring for their children. However, in this kind of petitions an interesting gender gap is observed: There are many more women who request it than men.
Specifically, according to the data of the Survey of Active Population (EPA) released by the National Institute of Statistics at the beginning of the month, in Spain in 2014 there was a total of 275,300 women working part-time to care for family members who depended on them ... and only 7,900 men. Which means that for every man who made this decision there are 35 women.
In general in Spain in the last year there was a reduction of 12.1 percent of part-time workers to care for other family members, but This reduction was noticed much more in men: they decreased by 51 percent (going from 16,900 in 2013 to 7,900 in 214).
Who asks for the reduction of working hours to take care of relatives?
In this way, more than 97 percent of part-time workers to care for family members are women, of which the largest group (175,100 women) is between 35 and 44 years old, although there are also young people: 66,300 better than 35 are in this situation.
The next question that may come to mind is why someone decides to ask for the reduction of working hours to take care of dependents in their charge. Although it seems a very personal issue, the answer is also reflected in these data: 51.4 percent of women (141,000) do so because they "can not afford adequate services for the care of children", which represents an increase of 8.4 percent compared to 2013.
Likewise, in 2.8 percent of cases (7,900 women) women ask to work part-time to take care of older or sick because they can not or can not pay adequate services for their treatment; while 5,600 women reported both reasons and 121,000 reported other reasons.
Angela R. Bonachera
